Monday, Mad Moviegoer headed to the FilmCenter intent on seeing the well-regarded WWII drama “Protector” (the Czech Republic’s submission for the Academy Award). But I realized I couldn’t watch it and make it to the press screening of “The Blind Side,” opening Friday. So I opted for “Heiran,” the debut feature from Iranian documentary filmmaker Shalizeh Arefpour. It’s just the sort of serendipity MM encourages all festgoers to give into. Buy a ticket. Take a chance.

In this melancholy charmer, Mahi and Heiran (Mehrdad Sedighian and Baran Kosari, pictured) are star-crossed lovers. She’s a beloved only daughter, headed to college and a better life. So her father intends. He’s an Afghan immigrant working in their village to earn money for college in Tehran. Whatever else Heiran’s circumstances, that he’s from Afghanistan is enough to scuttle any budding romance. And blossom it does, in gentle and quietly amusing scenes. Mahi’s father is vigorously disapproving. Her grandfather (the late, great Khosrow Shakibaei) is a sweet interventionist, in part becauase Mahi is amazingly, well, “stubborn” is a word used quite a bit. She follows Heiran to Tehran. Their life together is loving. It is also made tenuous because of his immigration status. “Heiran” is not the only immigration saga playing during the festival, just another that reminds audiences that borders erected and/or crossed are a global theme.

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If you want to get the jump on the Oscars race during the fest, plan on seeing the sneak preview (I’m pretty sure I cracked the code for the Sunday, Nov. 22, 4 p.m. screening) and also see George Ovashvilli’s The Other Bank,” Georgia’s entry into the best foreign picture race.

It’s Monday, and I’m headed to “The Protector,” a Czech film. Sunday festgoers plowed through the snow (easy) to keep the FilmCenter abuzz. Saw “My Neighbor My Killer” about Gacaca justice and Rwandan villagers wrestling with forgiveness and rebuilding after the 1994’s genocide.

Saturday proved to be one of those afternoons that answers why Mad Moviegoer loves the gig. Back-to-back interviews with director Michael Hoffman (“The Last Station”) and “Excellence in Acting” award recipient Hal Holbrook (“That Evening Sun”) went a far piece in reminding MM not only of the varieties of thought and feeling that flicker behind those onscreen moments but also the experiences that shape souls. Snow fell. A fire warmed. Each man was candid: Hoffman on marriage; Holbrook on politics and his departed father-in-law, “Cart” Carter.

Ed Harris, the actor nominated for Academy Awards for Apollo 13, The Truman Show, Pollock and The Hours, received the Mayor’s Career Achievement Award last night at the King Center in Denver, the second night of the 2009 Starz Denver Film Festival.

Harris appears in “Touching Home,” a movie by first-time filmmakers Logan and Noah Miller that plays today and tomorrow at the festival. The Millers convinced Harris to appear in their film after catching him in an alley at the San Francisco Film Festival, where the actor was receiving an award. The brothers gave him their script then, and, despite initial reluctance, Harris called days later and agreed to set aside two weeks to film the movie.

Daniel Petty is a multimedia and online intern for The Denver Post covering this year’s Denver Film Festival.

Comments Off on Video: An Evening with Ed Harris at the Denver Film Festival

That’s the question our fab den mom Pete Names asks during the Starz Denver Film Festival. It’s true I get bleary. But I seldom get weary. I’m not alone with the over indulgence. Plenty of Denver Film Society members see more than 20 films over the next 11 days. There are more than 200 to choose from. To this bonanza, the film society keeps sending out releases about additions. In an email time-stamped 4 a.m., they announced there will be a sneak peek screening Sunday, Nov. 22, 4 (p.m. thankfully). Yesterday afternoon, they announced J.K. Simmons will receive the John Cassavetes Award, following a screening of “The Vicious Kind” (Sunday, Nov. 22 12:30). You may not immediately recognize his name but his face — beautifully hangdog — aid him in comedies. He was Juno’s dad. (He parodies that role in a vid called “Jewno”. First got to know him in a less charming but indelible role as Vernon Schillinger, a white supremacist inmate in the terrific HBO series “Oz.”

Things begin tonight with Lee Daniels and Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness on the red carpet for the local premiere of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire.”

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.